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8/5/14

The Problem of Evil.

24.2.10

There's even the chance that this could find her. Maybe I'll send it. The thing is I remember a few stories I've been told very well and hers is one. I will not tell it; it's not my story. My story is that I will think of her every time I hear Cat Stevens (esp Moonshadow) and almost every time I see the Mississippi. I love the Mississippi for swallowing that bastard and I sincerely hope that his death is the only one I ever celebrate.

And as I celebrate I ask myself about evil. By nature I'm privatio boni - I do not anthropomorphize Evil, nor do I doubt that it exists..however, unlike Augustine I try very hard not to hold it in orbit with (capital G) Good. I am speaking exclusively of moral evil - I do not believe in natural evil....perhaps there's a fixed constellation of evil...a balance....but if so why would we remain as a species so terribly offended by it? I'm essentially a-religious and an atheist, so I hate the idea of evil with the capital E. I don't want to give it the power and fury of either suppression or examination. Nevertheless there's a reminder everywhere you sniff that we are surrounded by things and people that are around to take things from you and hurt you.

I wonder if my appreciation of that hungry river makes me evil.

Certainly I've done worse than enjoying someone's death. I know I have. If I really examined that in all of it's depth I fear I'd take myself for a drive on the Mississippi myself.....I'm not going to do that. There was something I wanted to say and all my musing keeps watering it down. I believe:

That life hurts. We hold on to each other. It's poor comfort and often causes further pain; but it's what we have. It's all that we have.

Justice is a man-made concept. We try very hard to figure it out. We imagine there's a divine being to agree with us. We try to order the chaos and the animal in us with jails and judges. The thing is, our appetite for pain becomes evident in the justice we design. I think we're alone in the universe and that we're not qualified for justice.

I am glad he died. I watched the news. I figured he'd take someone with. It may not be Justice, but it feels right to me.

J,

I'll re-read this and I'll think of you. I'm sorry for how it must have hurt and for what it took from you and for your silence. I just wanted you to know that I know. I have this story about it: that I doubt myself a little more and I doubt the world a little more and I have more belief in the strength of the individual because of your story. Because of you. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know I keep it with me: for my self and my wife and her daughter.